Award winning investigative reporter and mystery writer Hank Phillippi Ryan has found her calling not once but twice.

On Sunday afternoon, the Boston Channel 7 reporter spoke to a crowd gathered at the Mattapoisett Library about her work and how a bit of naïveté and boldness landed her the careers of her dreams.

As a 20-year-old college graduate who majored in Shakespeare, Ryan landed her first job as a reporter at Indianapolis’s biggest radio station without taking a single journalism class. She played her cards right, namely that the station’s license was soon up for review and it would need more women on the payroll.

Ryan got the job and eventually switched to television news, making a name for herself as an investigative journalist.

"I took a chance and I found my calling," she said.

Righting wrongs has been something the veteran reporter wanted to do since she was in secondary school.

As a middle school student, Ryan said she was voted Most Individual, which means “we don’t want to sit with you in the lunchroom,” she joked. In the school yearbook, her photo was intentionally printed upside down to further drive home her outsider status. Ryan’s mother said that was part of life, and she had to forget about it.

Ryan responded: “No, I don’t. I’m going to try to make a difference.”

Her work in the Boston area has lead to homes in foreclosure being restored to the owners, to lifesaving tests for infants, to better 911 systems statewide, to outing corrupt politicians and bringing firehouses up to, of all things, the fire code.

“We really made a difference in the world,” said Ryan.

But, there was one thing the 33-time Emmy award-winning journalist had not done in her 40 years on television, write a book. The idea had been in her mind from the time she was a kid reading about Nancy Drew and Sherlock Holmes in her family’s hayloft.

“I always wanted to write mysteries,” she said. “Wouldn’t it be kinda fun to make stuff up? How hard could it be? I know how to tell stories.”

That was 11 years ago, and at age 55, Ryan hoped the gamble would work out as well as it did when she landed her first reporter job.

As she began writing her first novel, Ryan found that it was much more difficult than she could have imagined but equally as rewarding.

The response to her first novel showed Ryan she was right to follow her instincts. “Prime Time” won the Agatha Christie Award for best first novel and became a bestseller in The Boston Globe. Since then Ryan has published seven other “smart, fast-paced” novels. The latest, "What You See" focuses on investigative reporter Jane Ryland as she seeks answers to a child's abduction by her own stepfather, and as Detective Jake Brogan delves into a stabbing at Faneuil Hall that leads him down a rabbit hole of extortion and conspiracy.

The Boston-based mysteries are truly “ripped from the headlines” as Ryan takes elements of cases that come across her desk at work and from the work of her husband, a criminal lawyer. Her novels incorporate issues from the housing collapse, the foster care system and other timely topics.

“I take a little piece of this, I take a little piece of that until at one moment it goes together and it just sounds right,” she said.

Her formula has met with considerable success, including a number of bestsellers and many prestigious awards in the mystery/suspense world.

Ryan, whose ninth novel is already on the way, says she considers herself fortunate to have found success in two careers. She encouraged those gathered at the library on Sunday to take their own risks.

Said Ryan: “If you take nothing from today, I want you to ask yourself, what is it you want to do? I am the proof that it’s never too late to follow your dreams.”

The event was sponsored by the tri-town libraries as well as the Friends of the Mattapoisett Library and the Friends of Plumb Library.